New rooms at the Polynesian Resort

All Resorts go through renovations to the rooms. Sometimes it is just a soft or hard goods rehab with some touching up and other times it is a full room redesign. The Polynesian over the years has seen many redesigns. From the Shag carpet of the 70’s and 80’s to the more authentic touches of the early 90’s. One of the biggest changes was in 2005 when an almost 3 year long renovation took place adding in all new furniture, and modern electronics like a flat panel TV and a clock with an Ipod dock. Amazing it takes that long when the resort itself was built in 7 months. Then again they did not have to work around guests and staff back then.
With all the changes coming to the Polynesian it was also time for a new room design. Back in February on this year (2012) 4 rooms were blocked out of the system to become the test rooms. In past test rooms there were only 2. Does the new DVC have something to do with the extra rooms needed to test items? Is it for the expanded amount of ADA compliant rooms being added to the inventory that they needed Rapa Nui to test out a room design for an accessible room? I can only speculate.Along with improvements like new electrical, plumbing and materials, they are adding the two sinks into the original longhouses and found some room to expand the size of the bathrooms slightly along with adding double sinks to all rooms. The new rooms are not as drastic of a change as I expected. The upper portion of the walls will go to a white color from the tan. The headboards will get a lighter tan insert instead of the dark brown woven insert. The beds are white with new pillows stacked along the back and a tubular shaped pillow (white with dark brown ends or piping depending on which sample they go with from the different rooms). Written on the pillows in the same text font that the Polynesian sign uses it said “Mana ‘O Nani” in one of the rooms and “Sweet Dreams” in the other room. At the foot of the bed in one of the rooms was a floral print blanket. The carpet was new with an outlined brick pattern raised up out of a low pile carpet. The chair and foot stool was recovered in a light tan microfiber and the day bed was recovered in a white bottom and white back with a light green Hawaiian pattern (lines and triangles). There was still some items not installed and many of the same items from the current room but that might change…or not. The change does brighten up things but keep the same feel. Not sure how the white will hold up to kids but they replace bedspreads often and I am guessing the cover over the day bed can be replaced. The light color on the chair will be a problem. The drapes were also a darker brown. You can see the test patterns for the hallways and in one building they had a cool tiki for the hallway lighting. I vote for that one. I posted a video of the hall on my Facebook page. The only photo I was able to get was from outside one of the rooms through the drapes.While I was there I did get confirmation that the work on the rooms will not start until January and it will be in Hawaii longhouse. They had already blocked club bookings for January so changing those dates would be difficult. They were to have started working on Tonga lounge and Aotearoa for the new room last week so all that is put off. Not that I am surprised. I will remove the schedules from the longhouse pages and only keep the dates for Hawaii unless I find out new dates. I would expect to see the work on the longhouses going through 2013.
There are much more changes to come to the resort in the next few years so look for a much different Polynesian in 2018.